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Smart Everything: Machine Sensing and Awareness

Smart Everything: Machine Sensing and Awareness
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Internet of Things:
With the birth of the internet of things there has been a influx of smart machinery which is changing the ways we interact with every day objects and in turn shaping our futures. The internet of things is "The network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which enables these things to connect, collect and exchange data."(En.wikipedia.org, 2018) This applies to almost all technology and by connecting them they can communicate making our lives easier. However what implications will this have for our privacy with big data being collected by all our technology and appliances.
(YouTube, 2018)
Pervasive Computing:

As a by product of the Internet of things comes Pervasive Computing which is described as by Margaret Rouse "Embedding computational capability (generally in the form of microprocessors) into everyday objects to make them effectively communicate and perform useful tasks in a way that minimizes the end user's need to interact with computers as computers. Pervasive computing devices are network-connected and constantly available." which is leading in the direction of smart homes, where your house builds up statistical data regarding your home and can communicate both to devices within the home and to you, for example, a smart egg tray allows you to see how many eggs you have left and sends you notifications, as you can see below.


Automation and Machine Learning
With the creation of automation and machine learning comes the era of automated smart factories, Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more. Machine learning has been described as "A method of data analysis that automates analytical model building. It is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention."(Insights, 2018)  With minimal human input we will see the creation of autonomous smart factories, where the technology will be communicating with each other, from production to packaging.

Image result for autonomous factory
(Hampstead, 2018)

Although with the creation of autonomous and intelligent technology there will be implications, such as decline in jobs globally. AI described  from a Future of Life article "Artificial intelligence today is properly known as narrow AI (or weak AI), in that it is designed to perform a narrow task (e.g. only facial recognition or only internet searches or only driving a car). However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI (AGI or strong AI). While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task."(Future of Life Institute, 2018) What consequences will this have ? If technology can think and is smarter than humans will our goals align? There has been much debate and controversy surrounding this subject as machine learning can integrate within various sectors of society, with current speech recognition AI such as Amazon's Alex and Apples Siri functioning extremely well then there is the extreme where even prominent figures such as Elon Musk has concerns "I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it," Musk said at the National Governors Association. "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not — they were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole."(Clifford, 2018) 


(YouTube, 2018)

Non Evangelical Artificial Intelligence
There have been many concerns from a religious aspect of creating an intelligence smarter than ourselves, Noreen Herzfeld, professor of theology and computer science at St. John’s University puts this nicely, “If we hope to find in AI that other with whom we can share our being and our responsibilities, then we will have created a stand-in for God in our own image.”(Duffer, 2018) Could AI bring about the end of religion or answers. Daniel Araya, a technological innovation researcher and policy analyst states “AI is now speculated about in the way people used to speculate on the nature of God. Could it replace religion on a whole?”(Duffer, 2018) Many argue that these technologies should be regulated before they are even introduced, as AGI in the wrong hands could have a catastrophic repercussions for the Human race.

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